


the road to heaven's door

by growlery



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Veronica Mars Fusion, Community: trope_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-19 09:03:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/growlery/pseuds/growlery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erica is the Veronica Mars of Beacon Hills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the road to heaven's door

**Author's Note:**

> For the wildcard square of my trope_bingo card (au: fusion). Title is from Suicide Blonde by The Weepies.

Erica doesn’t have a lot of friends at Beacon Hills. 

Okay, no, that’s a lie, Erica doesn’t have _any_ friends at Beacon Hills; Erica has people who film her when she’s having a fit, Erica has people who laugh when people film her having a fit, Erica has people who pretend she doesn’t exist when people laugh when people film her having a fit, and Erica has people who corner her in the girls’ bathroom and say, “I need your help.”

Erica arches an eyebrow. “Oh really,” she says.

Stiles Stilinski coughs, shifts on his toes, glances around himself. Erica can’t tell if he’s uneasy because of whatever it is he’s come to her for or if it’s because he’s in the girls’ bathroom. Probably a bit of both, knowing Stiles. 

“Someone broke into my locker and stole... something,” he says, making a vague gesture with his hand. Erica just looks at him. “I need you to get it back.”

“Yeah, not good enough,” she says. “What was it and why would someone want to steal it.” _From you_ , she doesn’t say, because she’s a bitch, yeah, but she isn’t that much of a bitch. 

Stiles mumbles something incomprehensible, but it sounds a lot like-

“Handcuffs?” Erica repeats, a little incredulous. 

Stiles’s face is red, but he nods. “They’re my dad’s.”

“What were you doing with your dad’s handcuffs in your locker?” Erica asks, which seems like a perfectly reasonable question, right, but Stiles immediately goes on the defensive. 

“None of your business,” he says quickly. “I just need them back.”

Erica makes a hmming noise. “I’ll need twenty five up front and another twenty five when I get them back to you,” she says, starts to turn away to wash her face like she’d been about to do before Stilinski got in her face. 

He catches her by the arm, stopping her. She turns in his grip, slowly, and just looks at him, hollow-eyed and deadly, until he lets her arm drop, holding his hands up. 

“Hey,” he says, “c’mon, Erica. That’s pretty steep for a pair of handcuffs. We’re friends, right? Can’t you just help me out this once?”

“For fifty dollars, yeah,” she says coldly. She tried not to flinch when he said _friends_ but she’s not all that sure she succeeded. At least she managed not to vomit. “I’ll add another twenty every time you try to be a jerk; I don’t charge enough to deal with that shit.”

“Sorry, jeez,” he mutters, giving her a weird look as he fishes out his wallet. “Fifty dollars. Fine. You better be as good as they say you are.”

Erica smiles at him, wide and plastic. “Oh, believe me,” she says, “I am _better_.”

“And modest with it,” Stiles mutters, and Erica just rolls her eyes.

“So who do you think did it?”

“If I knew that I wouldn’t be asking you, would I?” Stiles retorts. 

Erica sighs. “You don’t have _any_ idea who might’ve taken them?” Stiles shakes his head. “Did anyone else except you know they were in your locker?”

Stiles shakes his head again. “Just Scott,” he says, “but he doesn’t count.” Erica gives him a look. “You know what I mean. He’s my best friend. He’s got nothing to do with this, trust me.”

“Okay,” Erica says. “I should have them back to you in the next few days.”

“Seriously?” Stiles says, an eyebrow raised in scepticism, and Erica just laughs, shakes her head and leaves. 

***

Two days later, Erica stops by Stiles’ locker and says, “Here.”

She hands Stiles his handcuffs, and the look on his face is more than enough reward for the effort she put in to find them. The rest of the money doesn’t hurt either, of course. 

“How,” Stiles asks wordlessly, and Erica laughs. 

“If you were as clever as you like to think you are,” she says, “you’d have figured it out too.”

“Wait,” Stiles says, reaching out a hand to stop her leaving, but he freezes inches from her arm and retracts it. “Tell me who took them, at least.”

Erica wasn’t going to say anything, but she’s sort of pleased despite herself that Stiles remembered not to touch her. It’s nothing less than what he _should_ do, she knows that, but she isn’t exactly used to people treating her with basic human decency. 

“Let’s just say I know way more about Scott and his girlfriend’s sex life than I ever wanted or needed to,” she tells him. Stiles’ eyes widen with shock, and she pats him vaguely on the shoulder. “Guess he counts more than you thought.” 

With that, she walks off, hitching her bag higher on her shoulder, tossing a, “See y’around, Stiles,” over her shoulder. 

She’s barely gone five paces before a hand closes around her wrist and drags her into an empty classroom. Enraged, Erica whirls around and opens her mouth to demand to know what the fuck whoever it is think they’re doing, only to see it’s Jackson Whittemore. She might’ve guessed. 

“What do you want?” Erica asks, half angry, half wary. Stiles is a dick, yeah, but he’s never been actively mean to her, which was probably a large part of why she used to have a pretty embarrassingly huge crush on him. Jackson, on the other hand... well. 

Jackson huffs a breath. “I need your help.”

Erica laughs bitterly, looking away. “Yeah,” she says, “you and the rest of the fucking school. So what is it, Jackson? Wanna find out if your girlfriend is cheating on you? Want me to convince Lydia you’re not cheating on _her_?”

“I need you to find out everything you can about Scott McCall,” Jackson says, and Erica frowns because, wow, yeah, that was not even remotely what she was expecting. “You do that, right?”

“For the right price,” Erica says coolly, “yeah. And I’m damn good at it, before you ask.”

“So I’ve heard,” Jackson says. He takes out his wallet and pulls out a wad of notes. “Is this enough?”

Erica takes it. She’s never seen this much money all in one go in her life, let alone held it in her hand. She can’t help but hate Jackson with every fibre of her being, just for a second, that he could just hand it over to her without even thinking about it. 

“Just about, yeah,” she says, determinedly unfazed. “Do I get to know why you’re so interested in Scott all of a sudden?” 

Erica didn’t think he was even on Jackson’s radar. Scott’s not quite bottom of the barrel like her, but he’s hardly important by Jackson’s standards. 

“I want to know how the fuck he got so good at lacrosse so fast,” Jackson says viciously, and Erica thinks, _oh_ , and, _of course_ , because she really probably should’ve guessed it was about lacrosse. “There’s no way it just happened, he’s on something and I wanna know what. And one other thing,” he adds, giving her a dismissive once-over, “don’t even think about telling anyone about this, yeah? Not that anyone would believe you, anyway.”

“I get it,” Erica bites out, and shoves the money in her bag. That’s the only reason she does this, after all; one day she’ll make enough money to go to college and leave this shitty town with its shitty people far, far behind.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] the road to heaven's door](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003070) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




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